Fiction Friday ~ A little late

Gretchen had taken all she could stand. Henry, her husband of two years had done everything wrong again. The toilet paper was facing the wrong direction, she had to fix it. When he brushed his teeth, he had squeezed the tube from the middle, again. After all that time she spent carefully pushing the toothpaste out of the end, her hard work was completely undone. And then there was the worst offense of all. He had left the toilet seat up, again.

After she picked up his dirty clothes and put them into the hamper, two feet away from where he had left them, she took the toilet seat and lid completely off the toilet. If he wasn't going to use it right, he couldn't use it at all. She was carrying the heavy seat and lid into the living room when she tripped on something in the doorway. The seat flew out of her hands as she went to catch herself from landing on her face. She pushed herself up to see what she had tripped over. Henry's shoes were lying in the middle of the walkway.

"Henry, help me. I think I've sprained my ankle." She waited, but there was no answer. So she called again, louder in case he was in the kitchen. "Henry!" Still, no answer.

She pushed herself up and hobbled over to the back of his recliner. There he was, in his seat as always. The remote control was in his hand. The heavy toilet seat was perched neatly on his head, his eyes blankly staring at a TV he would never see again.

The Medical Examiner filed it as a household accident, the strangest one he had ever seen. Gretchen was so upset when police and ambulance arrived that nobody doubted it was anything but an accident.

For the rest of her life, when she spoke of Henry, she would always end with "If only he had put that damn toilet seat down, he'd be alive today!"